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Movie Review

Warehoused

July 31, 2017 By Nathan Frontiero Leave a Comment

For reasons that boil down to my own naïveté and exposure to imperialist propaganda (better known as the American education system), I grew up assuming that entities like the United Nations and its member countries were infallibly dedicated to the welfare of human beings. That line of thought has since been killed, which makes Warehoused […]

Movie Review

I Am Not Your Negro

April 28, 2017 By Søren Hough 1 Comment

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I Am Not Your Negro, a movie which cannot spell out its own true name, sanitizes itself for the sake of the MPAA and declares itself at once a film catered to a certain audience. And yet that is perhaps where the film’s greatest strength lies. Director Raoul Peck makes an impassioned plea through the […]

Movie Review

London Film Festival 2016: The Ghoul

April 18, 2017 By Jonny Smith Leave a Comment

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You’ve may not have realised it, but you’ve probably seen Gareth Tunley plenty of times on television. He’s appeared in everything from Hustle and The Thick of It to Peep Show (memorably as “more cor anglais” Gog) in the last decade. It turns out Tunley, perpetually stuck in bit parts, has now moved behind the camera and made a curiously intense psychological […]

Movie Review

London Film Festival 2016: The Autopsy of Jane Doe

November 21, 2016 By Jonny Smith Leave a Comment

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Like Ronseal, The Autopsy of Jane Doe does exactly what it says on the tin. Writers Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing have done their research and come back with a horror film based on the meticulous process of sleuthing through a cadaver. Of course there’s more to the film than a mere autopsy — just […]

Movie Review

London Film Festival 2016: Brimstone

November 1, 2016 By Jonny Smith 1 Comment

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One of cinema’s greatest characters, let alone villains, is Robert Mitchum’s insidious preacher Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter. With ‘love’ and ‘hate’ emblazoned on his knuckles, Powell stalks the Southern Gothic landscape with sinister desires and an ominous aura of dread. Mitchum’s performance is one not easily forgotten or trumped. That was until […]

Movie Review

The Neon Demon

July 10, 2016 By Søren Hough 2 Comments

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The Neon Demon kills Jesse (Elle Fanning) before the movie begins. I can’t think of a film that dared to off its protagonist in the opening shot. No, this isn’t a spoiler, and anyway, The Neon Demon isn’t the kind of film you can spoil like that. It’s a psychosexual thriller in the vein of Satoshi Kon’s […]

Movie Review

Spotlight

January 5, 2016 By Søren Hough Leave a Comment

Spotlight might be the ugliest film of 2015. It’s so wrapped up in its own aesthetic of reality—washed out faces that blend in with pale, drab wallpaper, garish orange furniture clashing with a painfully ordinary office—that you might cry foul that it’s meant for the big screen at all. Yet Tom McCarthy, the visionary director behind […]

Movie Review

London Film Festival 2015: Green Room

January 1, 2016 By Jonny Smith 2 Comments

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Punk Music has always had an uneasy relationship with violence, but for all the bravado, safety pins and rioting it’s never been explicitly tied to outright murder. That was until ultra-violent thriller Green Room hit theaters. Following on from his widely praised debut, Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier cranks the drama up to eleven and produces an exhilarating, albeit […]

Movie Review

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

December 21, 2015 By Søren Hough 4 Comments

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I paid attention to the little things in The Force Awakens. Some of these were visual — the small creature with eyes set apart like a hammerhead shark poking its head out of the sand, the vulturous creature picking at the remains of a ship as if it were a carcass. Others were musical, like […]

Movie Review

Experimenter

December 10, 2015 By Esther Rosenfield 1 Comment

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If we define postmodernism as art which questions and critiques established formal rules, Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter might accurately be described as post-postmodern. It deconstructs the impulse towards deconstruction; instead, Almereyda asks his audience why they consider some rules worthy of clinging to and not others. The obedience experiments of Stanley Milgram may be the subject, but […]

Movie Review

The Good Dinosaur

November 23, 2015 By Ari Donnelly Leave a Comment

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While I prefer to judge a film on its own merit, nothing exists in a vacuum. An artist’s work is always weighed against their past efforts or, in the case of Pixar, against the reputation of the studio. And indeed, no review of The Good Dinosaur will print without comparing it to Inside Out. Nor […]

Movie Review

London Film Festival 2015: Observance

November 18, 2015 By Jonny Smith 2 Comments

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Alfred Hitchcock, the master of the thriller film, once commented on the idea of voyeurism in a conversation with Francois Truffaut. He said, “I’ll bet you that nine out of ten people, if they see a woman across the courtyard undressing for bed, or even a man puttering around in his room… They could pull down […]

Movie Review

London Film Festival 2015: Anomalisa

November 17, 2015 By Jonny Smith 2 Comments

Standing in the queue for the London Film Festival’s mysterious secret screening, all the talk was unsurprisingly concerned with what lay ahead on the mammoth screen at the Odeon in Leicester Square. Packed together like cattle, there were murmurs of The Hateful Eight or, perhaps most widely suspected, The Danish Girl. But of course you can’t second guess the […]

Movie Review

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

November 7, 2015 By Shrinkhala Dawadi Leave a Comment

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In the opening scene of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), leading man and superspy for the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), jumps onto the wing of a jet and hangs on for dear life as it takes off. A shot of this, incidentally, is featured on one of the promotional posters for this movie. And what […]

Movie Review

Jurassic World

August 24, 2015 By Hailey Duran 1 Comment

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Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park was a cultural phenomenon. It remains an impressive movie that has captured the imagination of every child and adult, dinosaur-obsessed or not. While its sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, didn’t manage to captivate audiences like its predecessor did, it remained an entertaining dinosaur-themed diversion. (Jurassic Park III, on the other hand, does not exist.) So when Universal Studios […]

Movie Review

It Follows

July 19, 2015 By Nathan Frontiero 7 Comments

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It Follows taught me to fear everything onscreen. The film’s visual language elicits constant unease and feeds off our growing existential dread. The movie takes you in and traps you, leaving you addicted to its inescapable paranoia. The film opens with an unassuming shot of a suburban street in early autumn. Birds chirp and all seems […]

Movie Review

While We’re Young

May 28, 2015 By Nathan Frontiero 1 Comment

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We all have to grow up eventually. There’s a grim air to that statement—it smacks of morbid cliché—but the inevitability of aging is a powerful motivator. It forces us to confront the decisions we’ve made thus far and confront our self-imposed stagnation. I don’t know if writer/director Noah Baumbach is a cynic but, like me, he is […]

Movie Review

Timbuktu

April 23, 2015 By Thibault Jalby Leave a Comment

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When Abderrahmane Sissako‘s Timbuktu hit screens around France, it had a modest start at French box office. But after winning Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the François Chalais Prize at Cannes last year, a remarkable seven Césars including Best Movie and Best Director and a nomination for Best Foreign Picture at this year’s Oscars (though it ultimately lost to Ida), the movie is now enjoying renewed popularity […]

Movie Review

Big Hero 6

February 19, 2015 By Hailey Duran Leave a Comment

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Film has the capacity to inspire us. It can make us feel sentimental, happy and sad. The greatest power a movie has is the ability to reach out and touch an audience’s heart. Big Hero 6, directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, achieves this and more. This Disney animated movie (made in conjunction with Marvel Studios) tells […]

Movie Review

Kingsman: The Secret Service

February 18, 2015 By Jonny Smith 3 Comments

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It’s dinner time. Villain Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), flaunting his disarming lisp, confesses his love of good old-fashioned spy movies to debonair secret agent Henry Hart (Colin Firth). At the same time, he somewhat paradoxically reassures Hart that this isn’t one of them, coming within inches of breaking the fourth wall. This odd contradiction wonderfully summarises the action packed, […]

Movie Review

A Most Violent Year

February 17, 2015 By Nathan Frontiero Leave a Comment

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We hear breath over a black screen. A runner pants heavily before the camera reveals him jogging around New York City on a winter morning. He’s fit and keeps a strong, even pace. He wears a determined expression. The sound of his breath fades beneath the soulful piano stabs of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues.” […]

Movie Review

Selma

January 28, 2015 By Nathan Frontiero Leave a Comment

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Selma begins with intimacy and tension. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. prepares to deliver a speech in acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s nervous and complains something is not right with his ascot. His wife, Coretta Scott King, reassures him that all is well, and the two proceed to the ceremony. The new Nobel […]

Movie Review

The Babadook

January 3, 2015 By Esther Rosenfield 2 Comments

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The Babadook is out to get Amelia (Essie Davis) and her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Yet for the first third of the film, there’s not the slightest hint of a monster. A rhythm is established, and the film’s language is as well; cross-cutting means something bad is about to happen, for instance. But just as I […]

Movie Review

Dear White People

December 9, 2014 By Søren Hough 1 Comment

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I have a paradoxical love for Dear White People. On one hand, I wish writer/director Justin Simien had tackled such serious subject matter further along in his carer. On the other, I wonder if a more established director would have taken so many risks. A world post-Spike Lee – a man more concerned with strangely esoteric commentary and Korean […]

Movie Review

Interstellar with Nate and Søren

November 26, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero and Søren Hough 5 Comments

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Nate’s Review Interstellar surprised me. I walked into the theater expecting to see a bombastic space exploration flick. I did not expect the film to bring me to tears, but it did. The plot is centered on the final frontier, but Christopher Nolan’s latest is more than that. There’s a soul beneath the science-fiction spectacle. […]

Movie Review

Whiplash

November 18, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero 1 Comment

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I made it to the theater just in time. As the clerk handed me my ticket, she said, “There may only be two or three seats towards the front.” So I sat down in the front row, made myself comfortable and uncapped my pen. If you see the film anytime soon, count on finding me in the […]

Movie Review

Nightcrawler

November 7, 2014 By Jonny Smith 6 Comments

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What’s the dream footage to lead local morning news? A screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut, of course. That’s according to unscrupulous news director Nina Romina (Rene Russo). Her world is controlled by ratings which are in turn driven by suburban fear mongering and perverse images of death and violence. Nightcrawler takes us […]

Movie Review

Begin Again

November 3, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero Leave a Comment

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Begin Again was once called Can a Song Save Your Life? Most audiences will probably figure out the film’s answer to that question in short order. Writer/director John Carney’s latest proves again that music, like good food, is irresistible onscreen. The film is simple and earnest. It flows with the even pace of a relaxing summer song. Carney opens his film […]

Movie Review

Mommy

November 3, 2014 By Thibault Jalby 1 Comment

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Xavier Dolan is a 25-year-old writer and director from Canada. He’s already produced of five movies and won 36 awards  in festivals ranging from Toronto to Cannes. The phenomenal young filmmaker is back this year with Mommy. The film won the Jury Prize at the last Cannes Film Festival and was recently selected to compete in the Best Foreign Language Film category for Canada […]

Movie Review

Kill the Messenger

October 17, 2014 By Søren Hough 3 Comments

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Curiosity killed the cat, and all of the good journalists along with it. I was just a kid when Gary Webb broke news on the Contra-cocaine scandal. I don’t remember it. My recollection of the 90s reeks of the Clinton fiasco and not much else. As we learn in the epilogue of Kill the Messenger, the government fully […]

Movie Review

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

October 10, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero Leave a Comment

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Heartache has never looked so beautiful. Ned Benson makes his filmmaking debut with an audacious splash, releasing The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby as not one film, but three. The writer-director debuted two other versions of the movie, subtitled Him and Her (told from the male and female protagonist’s perspectives, respectively), at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. The Weinstein Company […]

Movie Review

The Riot Club

September 29, 2014 By Jonny Smith 2 Comments

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“I’m sick to death of poor people!” the repugnant Alistair Ryle (Sam Claflin) roars to his comrades atop the opulent dinner table, sloshing his wine carelessly out of its vessel in the process. This loaded, incendiary harangue epitomises the deplorable attitude of The Riot Club. The film’s vulgar band of toffs are some of the most […]

Movie Review

Samba

September 26, 2014 By Thibault Jalby 2 Comments

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As America has the Coen brothers, France has Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache.  While they found national success in the early 2000s (Those Happy Days, So Close), it was in 2011 that they became internationally renowned for their last movie, The Intouchables. They’re now easily the most famous and successful writer/director duo in France. In fact, The Intouchables is recognized as the […]

Movie Review

Pride

September 23, 2014 By Jonny Smith 4 Comments

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There’s a wonderfully poignant scene in Pride where Imelda Staunton’s character, Hefina, sits with one of the elder statesmen of their small mining village buttering sandwiches. As they go about this mundane task facing the static, Ozu-esque camera, discussing their new found solidarity with gay pride, the man makes the bold admission he himself is […]

Movie Review

Night Moves

September 22, 2014 By Esther Rosenfield Leave a Comment

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For a film so thematically focused on aftermath and consequence, Night Moves spends a lot of time on build-up. The meat of the movie doesn’t appear until about an hour in, well after the eco-terrorists played by Jesse Eisenberg (Josh), Dakota Fanning (Dena) and Peter Sarsgaard (Harmon) execute their violent plan. The going is slow but […]

Movie Review

Bashir’s Vision

September 19, 2014 By Søren Hough Leave a Comment

It’s tough to think of a better documentary topic than “the Blind Boxer.” I’m not overly familiar with the sport, but I imagine it has to be something of a novel concept even to the most diehard fans. However, by the last scene in Bashir’s Vision, I began to wonder if the topic is a bit too rich – so much […]

Movie Review

The Drop

September 18, 2014 By Søren Hough 3 Comments

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The thing about liquid is that it always takes the form of its container. Thin, round, tall, squat – it doesn’t matter. The same could be said of Hardy. In Locke, he affects a peculiar, nasally UK accent and gruff persona. As a spy in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he is a sharp, twitchy stud whose emotions rule his behavior. […]

Movie Review

Frank

September 16, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero 1 Comment

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The room is dim. Four musicians tinker with their instruments as a fifth, the front man, walks onstage. A slight but noticeable crescendo accompanies his entrance. He is tall with a strong build. A large paper mache head rests on his broad shoulders, covering his face and giving him a nondescript expression. This is Frank. Frank feels for […]

Movie Review

The Guest

September 15, 2014 By Jonny Smith 1 Comment

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With the door firmly closed behind him, the darkly sinister stranger has locked out any hope of escape with a stern push of the handle. Our female protagonist sits silently, frozen with fear at the thought of her imminent fate. The shady figure ahead lowers to her level and reassures the trembling girl that he’s a normal […]

Movie Review

Manakamana

September 12, 2014 By Esther Rosenfield Leave a Comment

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Manakamana is one of the most important films of 2014: not for greater culture or the world at large, but for cinema. Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez’s documentary about passengers taking a cable car to a Nepalese temple is one of the most unusual films I’ve ever seen. These filmmakers show an innate understanding of the power of […]

Movie Review

Snowpiercer

September 6, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero 2 Comments

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Snowpiercer is a bullet train. The film, like its titular locomotive, races along at breakneck speed. It blitzes through its two hours and bursts through the earthly obstacles in its path. Joon-ho Bong packs a striking brutality into his English-language debut. The result is a unique and darkly compelling piece of speculative filmmaking. Crackling radio clips introduce […]

Movie Review

A Most Wanted Man

September 2, 2014 By Søren Hough 2 Comments

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Murky water sloshes quietly against a stone wall. The scene is peaceful with nothing but the quite ebb and flow of the river to break the silence. Suddenly, a disturbance: the water starts to rise and fall, angrily smashing against the stones. But no matter how hard it pushes, the wall stands unmoved. The opening shot of A Most […]

Movie Review

Calvary

August 18, 2014 By Søren Hough 1 Comment

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Everything is a portrait in Calvary. Each shot feels designed to stand on its own. Cinematographer Larry Smith often fills his frames with the thoughtful faces of characters staring at something just out of view. At first glance, their countenances seem mysteriously unadulterated. But these shots take on new meaning in context. As we learn about their […]

Movie Review

Guardians of the Galaxy

July 24, 2014 By Søren Hough 10 Comments

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For the first few moments of Guardians of the Galaxy, I worried. I saw elements of tropes rearing their head instantly. I sighed at a roguish hero whose existence screamed traits of other classic movie characters. I cringed at a villain whose antics veered well into the theatrical. I gaped as names of planets, new alien […]

Movie Review

Under the Skin

July 15, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero 5 Comments

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It is a warm Friday afternoon in late April. I am sitting in a coffee shop having a conversation with an excellent teacher. He tells me to see a film called Under the Skin that’s just opened at the local Cinemark. I add it to the top of my ever-lengthening mental list, and on the following Wednesday, […]

Movie Review

Obvious Child

June 27, 2014 By Søren Hough 1 Comment

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I tried stand-up comedy once. I wasn’t very good at it. But as any successful comic will tell you, this is how everyone’s first, second, and hundredth attempts at stand-up go. Some have even gone so far as to call stand-up one of the world’s hardest professions. Still, the whole process terrified me. After that first […]

Movie Review

The Rover

June 25, 2014 By Søren Hough 1 Comment

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Eric is a bearded powder keg. He is more force than character, his short fuse adding tension to every encounter. Will his shouting end in an explosion of violence, or will he just walk away? We are never sure. A scowling road warrior takes off in a bloody quest to reclaim what’s his. We’ve seen this before; Mad Max […]

Movie Review

The Double

June 23, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero 3 Comments

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Find a mirror, look at your reflection, and remind yourself that you exist. Now, imagine a world that shut you out so completely it made you question that basic fact. This is where writer-director Richard Ayoade takes you in The Double. The film is an utterly surreal marvel, a comedy so dark it’s equal parts […]

Movie Review

Locke

May 30, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero 2 Comments

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There’s a contention among certain writers that leaving characters by themselves is detrimental to a story. Writer-director Steven Knight’s latest subverts that alleged rule beautifully. Less a character study and more a multivalent character revelation, Locke is a tremendous, inspiring narrative feat. Tom Hardy plays Ivan Locke, a construction supervisor who gets into his BMW late […]

Movie Review

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

May 16, 2014 By Nathan Frontiero 3 Comments

Time is unstoppable. That much is clear in Marc Webb’s second outing with everyone’s favorite wall-crawler. The director opens this film with a close up on the gears of a watch, focusing on time slipping second by second. His use of foreshadowing is blatant, especially if you know a thing or two about a certain […]

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